


off my rocks

by shipyrds



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Demisexuality, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Tropes, discussion of consent, no one knows how to deal with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 00:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4983427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipyrds/pseuds/shipyrds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras’ gaze drops to the phone in his hands. “Well, sort of,” he admits. “R, last night was a bad idea. I didn’t take certain things into account, and–”</p><p>“Oh, god,” Grantaire interrupts him, abruptly exhausted. "Not that I'm not incredibly eager to have this conversation," he says, "but could we table this for a time when I don't have your cum leaking out my ass?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Grantaire might have thought twice about staying over if he’d known how much Enjolras moved around in his sleep. (That’s a lie. He would still have stayed over, but at least he would have been prepared.) It’s obnoxious as hell, drifting towards consciousness every hour or so because one of Enjolras’ limbs has landed with a whump on his stomach, and Grantaire feels something warm and endearing swell in his chest anyway. “Stop it,” he groans, poking Enjolras in the armpit, and Enjolras amenably removes the offending limb from Grantaire’s face and rolls over, smacking his lips like a child. Grantaire curls up behind him, draping his arm and one leg over him to try and hold him in place. Enjolras’ hair is tickling his forehead, and he presses a kiss to the dark, smooth expanse of shoulder in front of him. He will absolutely freak out about everything in the morning, but that’s hours and hours away. 

The next time he wakes up, a fully-dressed Enjolras is sitting on the side of the bed, holding his phone and wearing his “proselytizing the masses” face. Grantaire is definitely not awake enough for this.

“The fuck time is it?” he mumbles into the pillow. He rolls over and sits up to squint at Enjolras. “Wait, have you just been sitting there waiting for me to wake up?”

“No!” Enjolras’ gaze drops to the phone in his hands. “Well, sort of,” he admits. “R, last night was a bad idea. I didn’t take certain things into account, and–-”

“Oh, god,” Grantaire interrupts him, abruptly exhausted. "Not that I'm not incredibly eager to have this conversation," he says, "but could we table this for a time when I don't have your cum leaking out my ass?" 

Enjolras starts. "I-- of course," he says. His voice regains its earlier sincerity, going horribly soft around the edges. He sets his phone aside. "Of course we can."

Grantaire wishes he'd fled in the night. “I’m going to use your shower,” he says, and walks ass-naked across the hall. 

He’s sure that faint squeak was just the bathroom door, and not any kind of noise Enjolras might have made. 

The shower is warm and strong, and it smells like Enjolras’ soap, and Grantaire stays there too long. He’s just postponing the inevitable, but he can’t quite face going back into the bedroom and letting Enjolras explain how he’s come to his senses, fucking Grantaire was horrific both as an idea and an experience, and they should never speak or touch again. Okay, so he might be projecting a tiny bit. But knowing last night was a fluke, a mirage, a goddamn miracle doesn’t mean coming back to earth is going to be any more pleasant.

He realizes as soon as he gets out that he doesn’t have a towel, and has to decide whether to disrupt Enjolras’ life further by rubbing his gross body all over his towel or dripping onto his bedroom floor. He settles for a furtive, speedy dry and refolds the towel meticulously when he’s done. 

He kind of regrets this when he has to walk back into Enjolras’ room entirely naked. He knows his body isn’t that great, okay, he’s been doing better about trying to appreciate the muscles in his arms and thighs but he’s always going to have a layer of chub over all that, and feeling Enjolras’ silent, razor-sharp gaze all over him as he retrieves his clothes isn’t helping his self-esteem. 

“Are you just gonna watch me get dressed or what, dude?” he asks, when it’s been several minutes and Enjolras is still staring. 

“Sorry! You probably want your space,” he says, leaping off the bed. What a weird thing to say. As a general rule, he’d like to be as close to Enjolras as possible. Surely Enjolras knows that. It’s why they fucked, dammit. “I’ll be out in the kitchen when you’re ready,” Enjolras adds.

Grantaire will never be ready for this horrible, horrible conversation, but he says, “Sure,” anyway. 

He tries to dry his hair a little more on the inside of his hoodie so he doesn’t look like a drowned rat, adjusts his t-shirt, sucks in his stomach– fuck, who is he fooling? This is Enjolras, who looks like he walked out of a David, if David had painted his citoyens as mixed-race angels. No wonder he regrets last night.

He doesn’t need to be spiraling right now, goddammit. He needs to be witty and sharp and crystalline for this conversation. He needs to be armored, not a giant squishy sappy piece of shit. And he can’t get his sock on. “Fucking brain fucking body fucking– FUCK!” he shouts, toppling over and whacking his arm on Enjolras’ desk as the door pops open.

“Are you alright? I just wanted to check on you,” Enjolras says. “It’d been a little while and I heard thumping and I just thought. Well.” His hand fidgets on the edge of the door, and oh god, he must really be furious if he’s losing his ability to speak in elegant paragraphs.

“Sure, no, it’s fine! I’m fine!” Grantaire says, from the floor. His voice is too high and he thinks he may actually melt into the floor from embarrassment, leaving only a gross splotch on Enjolras’ beautiful hardwood. “Sorry to keep you waiting! Everything is fine! I’ll be right out!”

Enjolras’ hand darts towards him, then drops, like he’s thought better of it. God knows Grantaire would. 

“Seriously, I just got startled and slipped. I’m fine,” he says. “Your desk is fine. All is well. Just let me finish putting my sock on.” The sock keeps getting caught on his toes. “You know, it might not appear to be true, but I have been dressing myself for upwards of twenty years,” Grantaire quips, trying to break this truly horrific silence. “Fuck it. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.” He strips off his other sock, stuffs them both in his pocket, and jumps up, arms spread in a mock bow. “Ta-da! Mostly functional adult human, at your service, Apollo.”

Enjolras’ face sours. Grantaire honestly hadn’t meant to antagonize him, but the nickname had just slipped out. 

“Sorry,” he says, eyes dropping. “I know you hate that nickname.”

“It’s not the nickname itself,” Enjolras says, “it’s what it represents. I just–” he lets out a wordless noise of frustration. “Kitchen?”

“Sure,” Grantaire says. Have his toes always looked this stubby? “Sure, we can do this in the kitchen if you’d rather.”

“I don’t have a lot to offer in the way of food,” Enjolras continues, “but there’s cereal, and some granola bars, I think. Maybe Ferre stole the last of them.” The cereal turns out to be some kind of horrible whole-grain variation on Weetabix, and Enjolras keeps glancing between the granola bars and Grantaire, so he takes one, although his stomach feels like it’s staging a small mutiny right now.

“So,” Grantaire says, unwrapping the granola bar. The crinkling echoes around the room. He’d like to have postponed this, but this silence might actually be more painful. “Talking.”

“Right!” Enjolras starts arrhythmically knocking his knuckles on the counter. It’s almost like he’s nervous. “Talking! I wanted to apologize, first off. I crossed boundaries I shouldn’t have crossed, and I think I made you uncomfortable. I should have considered your feelings more carefully before entering into anything with you, and for that I’m really sorry.”

Grantaire puts down the granola bar and stares. “Are you kidding?”

Enjolras wilts. “Of course, I know an apology can’t put everything right–”

“No, I mean, you think you made me uncomfortable? Enjolras, I was an enthusiastic participant in everything we did last night. Where the fuck are you getting this?”

His eyes dart to his phone. “There’s just. Information I have now that I didn’t have last night. It has been explained to me repeatedly that I should have thought things through more. To avoid-- awkwardness.”

Ah, there we are. Grantaire grits his teeth. He is going to have to murder Eponine. Probably Courfeyrac, too. “Fuck that, Apollo.” Enjolras looks up at him, startled. “No, seriously. Fuck that. You’re always talking about freedom, and choice, and respect, but you can’t even respect me enough to let me make my own choices? I’m a grown man, _Ange_ ,” and oh, he is angry now, the nickname shooting out like a curse. “I knew what I was getting into.” His voice softens a little. “I knew what I was getting into, and you didn’t.”

Enjolras’ eyes are wide and so, so brown. “You think I don’t respect you?” he says, softly, and oh no, he’s biting his lip. Of course that’s what he responds to. Not Grantaire using him as a vessel for his stupid feelings, and then using him for sex to gratify those stupid feelings, because apparently Enjolras had expected nothing less.

“I know you don’t respect me,” Grantaire mutters, ripping apart the granola bar. “That much was pretty obvious from the first day we met and you told me we didn’t have time for my ‘antics.’” The air quotes hang heavy in his voice. God, he hates the leaden self-loathing that always sinks into his stomach when Enjolras– well, does anything, really. Talks to him, looks at him. Even last night, he’d had to look away right before they made eye contact, because when Enjolras came to his senses he didn’t want to see it blooming in his face. 

“Fuck,” says Enjolras. “Fuck,” he says again. “Grantaire, I am so sorry, I never wanted–-”

“Can we just cut to the part where you tell me it’s for the best if we don’t do this again?” Grantaire interrupts, hating how rough his voice comes out. He knows it’s weak, but he can’t actually listen to Enjolras tell him he never wanted him. 

Enjolras is silent for a moment. “If that’s what you want,” he says.

“Please,” Grantaire says. 

Enjolras’ eyes shoot up, a blush creeping across his face, and he knows they’re both remembering the last time Grantaire had said “please,” two of Enjolras’ fingers knuckle-deep in his ass, his teeth scraping across Grantaire’s hip. There’s a beat, and then another, and when it becomes clear that Enjolras isn’t going to say anything, Grantaire pushes to his feet. 

“Right,” he says. “Well. This has been.” He can’t think of any adjective sufficient to describe both last night and this morning, so he settles for a vague hand waggle and a grimace. “Goodbye, Enjolras.” 

Enjolras still hasn’t said anything. At the door Grantaire turns around–- one last look, he’s never been good at self-denial-– but Enjolras doesn’t look angry at all. He looks, if anything, tremendously sad. 

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire says, closing the door behind him. He tries to shut the door as quietly as possible, but he must fail, because there’s a heavy thunk as soon as it closes. 

He’s still not wearing socks.


	2. Chapter 2

Grantaire doesn’t mean to stop going to meetings, but he’s got a portfolio review and a major sculpture project coming up, and sculpture has never been his forté. And it’s hard to motivate himself to go when every time he thinks of seeing Enjolras he kind of wants to curl up in bed with a bottle of whiskey and drink the entire thing. He hasn’t yet, which he’s trying to allow himself to be proud of. Instead, he texts all of his friends as soon as he gets home and sets up regular meetings as casually as possible: bar nights with Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and sometimes Joly, when med school isn't too bad and he's feeling up to crowds; sparring with Bahorel and Ep; sketching in the park with Cosette. He knows the only way to keep from turning into a sack of shit in a human suit is to be busy, because otherwise he’ll get drunk and stare at the ceiling and hate himself. He drags Feuilly to an incredibly bizarre “verbal experience” where Jehan reads poetry while flinging pieces of trash at the audience. He even has lunch with Combeferre. He always feels a little weird around Combeferre without the rest of the group to serve as a buffer, given that the man takes everything he does so seriously, and Grantaire’s main contribution to Les Amis is to systematically tear down the arguments he helps create. Someone in his junior seminar did a piece on the deep ocean, though, and so he asks about _Stygiomedusa gigantea_ , and Combeferre ends up waxing poetic on the intersection of art and science. 

He isn’t avoiding people at all. He’s just avoiding Enjolras. 

It’s for the best, really. His presence clearly makes Enjolras uncomfortable, if not furious; he remembers Enjolras’ fingers jittering on the door. And besides, maybe if he’s not seeing him all the goddamn time, he can finally get over him. 

Ha.

So it’s not a surprise that the first time he sees Enjolras in almost a month is at Jehan’s housewarming party. He’s barely drunk at all, nowhere near top form, so when Enjolras corners him in the kitchen he doesn’t even have wine as a shield.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says, arms crossed. He looks beautiful; the lights Jehan has strung up everywhere shine softly through his hair, turning it into a halo. He looks transfigured. He looks like a fucking Byzantine icon, and Grantaire needs to have five more drinks in him immediately. 

He discovers that his teeth are clenching involuntarily, and grins to try and hide it. “Is that not what you wanted, Apollo? I was under the impression that we both understood I would leave you alone and you would leave me alone and all would be bliss, bliss.” He flops a hand towards Enjolras. 

Enjolras flinches. 

“Or did you still want me tagging along at your heels? Because you can’t have both, you know. You can’t claim you give a shit about my feelings and still expect me to dog your every step.” He’s gesticulating wildly now, and god, he hopes no one else comes in. Bad enough Enjolras has to see this. “I still don’t understand why you say that like it’s a bad thing, anyway. Why wouldn’t you want me to avoid you?”

Enjolras’ eyes have been narrowing throughout their entire conversation, but at this they fly open. “What?” he says.

“Keep up, Apollo, I know your comprehension is flawless. Why would you want to see me again? After last time, when I practically manipulated you into fucking me?” 

“You manipulated me– have you been thinking that this whole time?” Enjolras uncrosses his arms and takes a step towards Grantaire.

“Yeeees?” Grantaire says. He feels the counter dig into his back. Someone has got to teach Enjolras about not looming. “Because that’s what happened?”

“R, I manipulated you, if anything. I knew how you felt, and we had sex anyway.”

“That is…” Grantaire shakes his head. “That is actually the opposite of how manipulation works. Manipulation is when, say, you’re in love with this incredibly gorgeous, impossibly unattainable guy, and out of the blue one day he says, hey, let’s fuck, and you fuck, and then you cuddle afterwards and sleep over and use him to fulfill your weird feelings-fantasies while letting him think it’s just a fuck.”

Enjolras’ voice is very small. “In love?”

“ _That’s_ what you’re getting out of this?” Grantaire thunks his drink on the kitchen counter so he can wave his hands around better. “You keep ignoring the part where I kept crucial information from you! You didn’t sign up to fuck a guy who’s in love with you! You signed up to fuck a guy who was entirely casual and didn’t care about anything!”

Enjolras’ face darkens. “For someone who claims to love me, you have a very low opinion of me,” he spits. “You keep saying I think nothing of you, that I hate you, that I don’t respect you–- so what, you think I was just using you? That you were just a convenient body?” His fists fly open, then shut. “Do you actually listen to anything I say, or do you just pick it apart? I don’t–- I would never have sex with someone I didn’t respect or care deeply about. It’s repulsive.”

“Repulsive. Nice one, Apollo, nice slut-shaming right there. Must be nice on your pedestal, looking at the rest of us mortals.”

“I AM NOT A STATUE!” Enjolras bellows, then looks immediately ashamed of himself. “Sorry. Sorry. I just-– I assumed you knew. Repulsive to me, I mean. I’ve talked about it enough, but I guess you never-– anyway. I’m not interested in sex with people I don’t care about. Which means I usually don’t have sex, period.”

“Fuck.” Grantaire is scrambling backwards. “Fuck, and I–- and we-–” he claps his hand over his mouth, feeling nauseous.

“Grantaire, no, wait. Please trust that I was-–” he tilts his head back a bit–- “ ‘an enthusiastic participant in everything we did that night.’ With all that goes along with it.”

Grantaire blinks at him. “You… care about me.” Forget the time with Jehan and the string cheese puppet show, this may be the weirdest conversation he's ever had.

Enjolras lets out a pained sigh. “That is what I was getting at, yes.”

“Sorry, just trying to wrap my head around this. You, Enjolras, care about me, Grantaire.”

“Have I really been that terrible at showing it?”

Grantaire thinks back to Enjolras, glorious and terrible, shouting at him in meetings, and yanking bottles out of his hand, and the granola bar, and Enjolras checking up on him, and earlier on That Night, the way he’d kissed him on the forehead before sliding home. Like he was something lovely. “Kind of, but you gotta understand, I’m not always the best at believing in good things,” he says. 

Enjolras smiles weakly. “We’ll work on that,” he says. 

Grantaire files that away to process several drinks later, because, well. “Wait,” he says. “If you–- care about me, then what was the big freakout in the morning?”

“Oh.” Enjolras scuffs at Jehan’s baseboard with his toe. “I kind of panicked in the morning, because you’d made it clear that it was just a casual thing last night, and I thought once you realized I’d lied to you about being able to have casual sex, you’d be furious.” He darts a glance up to Grantaire. “So I texted Ferre, but he just said ‘ _talk to him you human bludger_ ’ and that was unhelpful, so I texted Courf, and he said ‘ _FUCKING FINALLY!!!!!!!!_ ’ with like eight emojis, which was cute but also, not really helpful. So I texted Eponine, because you’re really close, and she just told me that she was going to murder me for playing with your feelings like that.”

Grantaire groans and reavows his month-old promise to murder Ep. “You didn’t, by chance, tell her in your text that you had any kind of feelings for me, did you?”

Enjolras is scrolling through his text history. “No, I just said ‘ _hi I know this is kind of weird but R and I just had sex and now I’m freaking out. Please advise_ ’ but I assumed she knew! I really don’t hide it! I have a fucking ‘DEMISEXUWHALE’ t-shirt! I gave that whole speech at the Ace Awareness Week rally!”

“Enjolras, neither of us could make it to the rally. That was the week Gavroche got really sick, remember?”

“Oh my god,” Enjolras says. “Oh my god, so she thought-–”

“That you were freaking out because I’d made some kind of love confession on the brink of orgasm or something.”

“And you thought-–” 

Grantaire sighs. “That you were freaking out because Ep had told you that I am just embarrassingly in love with you.”

Enjolras is grinning fit to split his face in half. “Embarrassingly?” he says, coming around the counter to poke Grantaire in the side. 

“Dude, can you not tease me about this,” Grantaire grumbles, shying away. “I’m glad we’ve figured this comedy of errors out, and you care about me, blah blah blah, but-–”

Enjolras is looming into his space again, forehead leaned against his. “I’m not teasing,” he says, as seriously as he can manage with that ridiculous smile on his face. “Really, I’m not, I just-– I was freaking out because I thought that you didn’t have feelings, that I’d just been projecting.”

“I promise I’m not usually this slow on the uptake,” Grantaire says. “Projecting?”

Enjolras grins, a little sheepishly. “Well,” he says. “I don’t know if I’d call it embarrassing, but when I say I care about you, it’s not like ‘you’re a friend and I don’t hate you, so let’s have sex,’ which is what you seem to be thinking.”

Grantaire blinks at him. “Oh.”

“Oh?” 

Enjolras’ grin ought to be illegal, that should be their next cause, outlawing that knife slice of a smile, Grantaire thinks, pulling his absurd face down to a more reasonable level, but he can do his part. For humanity.

 

“Guys,” says Bahorel, several minutes letter, “this is very tender and emotional, but I really need to get to the rags. Bossuet had an incident with one of Jehan’s skulls.”

They burst apart, Enjolras making a noise Grantaire really wants to reproduce later under more controlled conditions. 

“How long have you been standing there?” Grantaire splutters. 

“Entirely too long,” says Combeferre, coming in behind him. “Congratulations, you two. Jehan, where did you put the first aid kit?” he calls over his shoulder. 

In the general commotion, during which Combeferre extricates a badger tooth from Bossuet’s hand, Cosette reminds Joly how breathing works, Musichetta outlaws Hamlet recitations, and Jehan alternates between concern and theatrical pouting, Enjolras and Grantaire sneak out. 

“So,” says Grantaire. “This might seem like a line, but is there any chance I could come get my shoes from your apartment?”

Enjolras reaches out and threads his fingers through Grantaire’s. “You know, I don’t actually mind if it’s a line.”

“Well,” says Grantaire. 

“Well,” says Enjolras, grinning at him. 

“You know how I say you’re really eloquent? I take it all back.”

“I don’t know if I want sex right now, but I would enjoy seeing you get yourself off,” Enjolras breathes into his ear. 

“I take everything I have ever said back,” says Grantaire. “Clearly I am hugely wrong all the time. You are so eloquent. You are the most eloquent.” 

“Glad you can admit it,” Enjolras replies, leaning over to kiss him. “Let’s go home and you can get your shoes.” He waggles his eyebrows, and Grantaire nearly trips over a curb laughing. 

Maybe it will all end terribly. Maybe this will, in fact, be a horrific disaster. Grantaire is friends with Bossuet, though, and he’s partway through an art major. He’s rescued people from a hazardous waste dump on two separate occasions and survived a terrifying incident involving drunken welding, improper grounding, and a loose acetylene cap. Horrific disaster can suck it.

**Author's Note:**

> title from Mother Mother's "Reaper Man," which is actually the most Grantaire song ever to exist.
> 
> I also post work as noiselesspatientspider on here, but this is super tropey and mostly just dialogue, so I'm posting it on a side account. It is the longest thing I've ever written, though! Hooray for breaking the 3000 word mark!
> 
> You too can own [a demisexuwhale t-shirt!](http://www.redbubble.com/people/kirstendraws/collections/427088-whales)


End file.
